The fundamentals of linguistics
by AquariaAO
Summary: It all starts with language.


**The fundamentals of linguistics**

_Battle against the Renegades, February 1987._

– Do you think…  
He hesitates half a second, briefly glancing at his friend, unsure. But he goes on.  
– Do you think what we are doing is right?  
Milo cocks an eyebrow in surprise, a gesture that is sufficient to show such doubts have never bothered him.  
– Of course it is.

But Milo has never been a foreigner anywhere. Maybe this is what gives him this self-confidence he wears like a cape, this certainty that's like an armor around his mind.

He was born on a Greek island a few miles off the coast and raised on another arid rock bathed by the same sea. His mother tongue is still his own and the Sanctuary is his home, where he's always known exactly how to behave. He can't imagine what it's like to be forced to relearn everything, to be thrown into the unknown and have no other choice than to adapt somehow. Anyhow.

* * *

It all starts with language.

The smart Aquarius saint is fluent in several, which often owes him the praise and admiration of his comrades and his hierarchy. Nobody knows how much it cost him, every time he started learning a new one. Languages have their own way of shaping the universe with their sets of rules, traditions, customs, and having to speak another one means having to redefine all of these. Camus has often felt like a stranger, an intruder, lacking understanding of the most subtle aspects of a world that isn't his. He had to do like the others, to pretend to be one of them – but it has never fooled anyone, and certainly not himself. All his teenage years he hid in Milo's shadow – Milo who was at the right place from the very beginning, and who mastered innately every piece of their lives.

Camus speaks French with himself and his memories, even those he tries to ban from his brain. Oddly enough, he doesn't remember much of France: a few very distant flashes of happiness and after this, suffocating darkness. He was then brought to the Sanctuary and the unbearable heat of the scorching Hellenic sun, and had no other option than to pick up on both Greek – obviously – and Russian – his master's tongue.

As soon as he thought he had gotten used to this dry, sunny place, he was told he'd have to train in the endless night and winter of northern Siberia. He learned Sakha there, to communicate with peasants living in small huts like theirs – a people of hunters and fishermen. With frequent trips to the Sanctuary, he was required to juggle with languages. And as if it wasn't enough, his master added English to the pile. Because Dyeduska was a dreamer who wished for a united world, and because the Pope wanted to be able to send his emissaries all over the globe. Multilingual without having chosen it, Camus turned out to be a first-class spy, who could fill his head with secrets in many languages, and wouldn't repeat them to anyone.

He remembers choking on words, wanting to express himself so badly, but the lack of vocabulary and the shame of butchering grammar sealed his lips. He listened a lot more than he talked, trying to get Aiolia's banter, forcing himself to laugh with them even when he missed the joke. He was lucky he was a fast learner and had a master who loved books. But even after he became fluent, he kept the habit of not speaking more than necessary. His accent remained noticeable, as a constant reminder he was a foreigner. Nobody else minded – the Cancer Saint's strong Italian lilt made girls' hearts flutter back in the days, and Deathmask couldn't care less about mispronouncing sounds anyway. But Camus did: perfectionism is the trait of those who desperately try to control what they can because the rest of their lives is beyond fixing. If you're not the best, you're not good enough, had said his half-brother before beating him senseless the day their father died. Camus hadn't been the best, then, and the French accent that scrapes each of his words, even now, is a biting reminder of his fate.

It is funny, come to think of it. He hasn't even spoken French aloud for years, and yet this lingering accent still pursues him. As much as he hates it, he hasn't been able to get rid of it. The exercises he did over and over again in the secret of his room, attempting to imitate the intonations of his Greek friends, changed nothing. His lives with his accent like a curse that makes sure he can't forget his strangeness and the wounds of his past. Curiously, he's noticed that the French he speaks to himself with in the privacy of his head has altered, too. It's no longer the pure sonorities of the perfect French-Academy diction he was taught by his family after he was born, but a mongrel prosody stained with hints of the other languages he uses. Oh, he could have cried, the day he realized that after sounding too French in Greece and Russia nearly all his life, he'd be considered a stranger ("the Greek", "the Russian") in his homeland too if he ever bothered to go back! One of life's cruel jokes that ensures he'll never cease to feel stateless absolutely everywhere.

Camus feels like the sum of his parts. Pieces shaped by different languages, different countries, that will never completely slot together. An awkward whole with cracks, like a jigsaw puzzle the gods would have toyed with, found too difficult to assemble, and left unfinished. An incomplete map, tainted with all the places he's lived in, each of them leaving its indelible print.

And the Aquarius saint keeps excusing himself to Shura with endless Δεν είμαι διαθέσιμη, even if when he's back to his temple he admonishes himself – _mais qu'est-ce qui me prend?_, murmurs Это ваша вина towards Dyeduska's grave, knowing he can't hear but wishing he could – _l'avais-tu prévu?_ He carries messages all around the world on behalf of the Pope – I'm a special envoy for the Sanctuary – and reports back to the mighty figure he's no longer sure he believes in – άρχοντας. Milo visits, and he says όχι τώρα when he means _oui s'il te plaît_, and as his friend turns his heels towards the exit a moment later he forces himself to utter τα λέμε αργότερα while his heart dreams of screaming_ ne t'en va pas_.

Milo can only speak Greek and a little English. He doesn't need to adapt to people: people adapt to him. For him, objects have always had the same names, words the same meanings. Would he be able to cope, if his world of certainties tottered, wobbled, crumbled? If he lost his marks, all his points of reference? If he saw others walk ahead, and all he could do was try to catch up with their shadows? Camus isn't sure. He has faith in the Scorpio saint, who's a fierce fighter. But going to war against an enemy of flesh and blood is very different from battling invisible earthquakes shaking the core of your existence.

* * *

_Battle against Hades, April 1987._

The irony, Camus thinks, that it should all end the same way it began.

Once more he's trapped inside his silence, exactly as he was the days that followed his arrival to the Sanctuary. Unable to utter a single word in Greek, he could only listen to Milo's voice as the little boy was babbling next to him. He didn't really care then, that Camus couldn't understand a thing he said. He seemed happy to prattle to his heart's content, knowing he wouldn't be stopped the way Serket's absent-mindedness stopped him. Serket didn't give a damn, but Camus did, even if he couldn't get the meaning. He cared about the sounds that were pronounced, the tones used, the position of stresses, the differences and similarities with his mothertongue in an almost clinical way. He also cared about the blue-haired boy's apparent happiness at his presence near him, and the smile that could be heard as well as seen at the end of each of his sentences.

Now… There's no smile to be heard.

Milo doesn't understand, and he's not used to it. His bearings have long been lost. His friend died, leaving him alone with a sorrow impossible to overcome, and now he's back, but he's not on his side – hasn't Camus always been on his side, by his side, since the first day they met?

Milo's hands are already around Camus's frail neck.

– Why? Why the fuck would you join them! Against us! Against _me_!

He isn't sure whether it's anger or pain that's tearing his heart apart. He's hurting as much as he's boiling with rage, and his pain keeps turning into an anger that keeps turning into pain in an overwhelming tornado that sweeps everything away. He's way past pride, honour, sanity, and nothing really matters anymore beside the fact his best friend – the love of his life – has betrayed him.

– For fuck's sake Camus, answer me!

Tears are flowing from unseeing eyes. A mute mouth opens on silence.

_I can still hear you._

Nothing is actually said, but it is enough. The avenging fingers suddenly become limp and Milo's body presses heavily against his as he almost collapses, trembling from head to toe, the truth finally dawning on him. With his last ounce of energy, Camus catches his friend, closing his arms around the shaking form. They both fall on their knees in a dismal crack of metal but the Aquarius Saint doesn't let go. He buries his nose in Milo's hair and holds him tight.

Around them, the Sanctuary is falling to pieces. Blocks of stone crash on broken slabs in a deafening noise. Athena is dead and the whole world crumbles away in retaliation.

_I will always hear you._

Milo chokes back a sob. Camus holds tighter.


End file.
